Word: shakeel
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...Salem saga is just one of the dramatic stories playing out in the press and on websites. Also in the news is Chota Shakeel, Bombay's current boss of bosses, whom the local police claim they have on 71 tapes of bugged calls. Among Shakeel's alleged phone buddies are actors, directors and producers. The tapes still must have their authenticity established, yet they add credence to the popular theory that in India, which makes more films per year than any other nation, the Mob controls most of the movie business...
...star on Shakeel's speed-dial list is Sanjay Dutt, son of actor-politician Sunil Dutt and the luminous Nargis (the two starred in 1957's Mother India, the Hindi Gone With the Wind). Bollywood's alltime bad boy, Sanjay has a past littered with drugs, a love of guns and implication in a series of bomb blasts in Bombay in 1993. His alleged taped conversation with Shakeel sounds innocuous; it would put anyone but a government eavesdropper to sleep. Dutt asks about a promised mobile phone connection (which he could well afford on his own). He complains about...
...consider the plight of Bharat Shah, the producer who corralled megastars Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit for Devdas. Shah has more troubles than a screenwriter could dream up. First, the police claim he was one of Shakeel's long-distance phone chums. Then rival don Abu Salem boasted of his investment in Devdas. Shah was arrested in January 2001, accused of being a front man for the Mob, and was jailed for months before getting bail. Now he's caught between two sets of gangsters. That raises, as they say, loyalty issues; it's like playing the Bosnians...
...last December's suicide attack on the Indian Parliament by jihadis linked to Pakistan put a crimp in the style of the D-Company. India moved 1 million troops to the border and demanded the return of 20 fugitives, including Dawood and Shakeel, and five other men from Bombay who masterminded the 1993 blasts. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he has no knowledge that they're living in his country. They shouldn't be that hard to find. I still have their Pakistani phone numbers and addresses from 1999. Musharraf has privately told U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that...
...What I wanted to do?become a military officer?that dream I had, that was crushed from the beginning. Now what dream should I see, what wish should I have for the future?" Shakeel asked me, plaintively. Then he reverted to the language of his beloved Bollywood. "The way life goes, the 'The End', only Allah knows...